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So, what were you doing 30 years ago?

#141
two fingers said:
You could say I have a problem with grunge. And Kurt was the non singingest non quitar playingest (made up words) famous person who ever wanked.
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i feel your pain! :roflmao:
Michedelic said:
That just accentuates the fact that the arrival of Nirvana, or I should say the massive sucess/acceptance(as I stated before, there had been already stuff like them emerging, including their first album, Bleach)was truly the very first 'ok, boomer' moment. For well over a decade previous, I was part of a music scene that wanted to see the likes of Van Halen and Journey go away, so I can't feel your pain. When wasn't rock an outlet for teenage angst? Isn't that the whole point?
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so what's your point? :laugh:

seriously, i get your point and i'm impressed with the "truly the very first 'ok, boomer' moment" thesis. :thumbsup: i was playing jazz and wasn't affected in those markets. TBH: my studio made money recording nirvana wannabes.

So, what were you doing 30 years ago?
raising kids who are now raising their own kids, and: playing, some traveling/touring, running a studio business, and other music business enterprises...it was a busy, fun time in my life.
 
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#142
Michedelic said:
I just flashed on this, and looked it up...maybe they didn't matter to you, maybe they meant everything to you, maybe you hated them because they 'ruined everything' (whatever everything might have been for you), maybe you weren't even born yet; as for me, I was a little beyond the intended demographic, but I liked them. They didn't exactly catch me by surprise as I had heard plenty of similar, forerunner stuff in the previous few years, but was amazed that something so raw was on mainstream rock radio. My only gripe was the over-saturation.
What am I going on about? 30 years ago this month, Nirvana entered a studio with Butch Vig to start recording Nevermind, and while there wasn't exactly one pivotal moment like 2/9/64, the following October was definitely a before/after period. I don't think anything like that would happen again.
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30 years ago I was 9. And had just started playing Trumpet. Had yet to touch a bass, had never been to a concert yet, and didn't know much about music aside from what I'd heard on the radio riding with my parents in the car
 
#144
Living in Indianapolis, working for a small custom programming shop. In season, from late April through early November, I spent many mornings a week on Geist Resevoir at sun up either in the water or at the wheel of a Mastercraft, just outside the no wake zone waiting for the first rays waiting for 'hit it'. We would get morning ski sets in at least 3 days a work week. Into work by 9 for whatever crazy project was waiting. In the winters we were ski patrollers doing evening and weekend shifts at an area east of Bloomington, west of Salem. Beautiful Mt Gnawbone we used to call it. We claimed 206' 1" on a bad hair day assuming you are 6 till with hair ;-) If we didn't have a shift, we were often there doing laps anyway. Blue Ice or Slush...

I was skill building after being full time in the 70's and early 80's. My work career was about to take a turn up as I would join a large public accounting firm and take over a software implementation and programming team.

I had my trusty blue 1k a GK head and a generic small 1x15 with a D140. Plus an electric guitar and a Tascam 4 tracker. I was in the middle of not playing with another sole or working a gig for 25 years. I needed a lesson in how to keep music at arms length at one point. The thing about addiction being 'Giving up everything for Ong thing' I was living proof for a while...
 
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#146
30 years ago, in college, I wrote and recorded a dance production on a Kawai Synth, using an archaic plastic sequencer. I got a dance company involved (from Brooklyn College) and managed to produce a complete performance that was done in a 750 Theater (I worked there, which made doing that possible).

I wrote, acted in, and even directed some theater performances that year too.

I was FAR more creatively productive 30 years ago than I am now, and determined to change that. Social media has done me much more harm than good.

Here are 3 clips from that show that I only recently came across:





 
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#147
30 years ago, I was in the middle of a short-term (18-ish months) job and living situation. I'd pretty much put down the bass (and playing music in general) a couple years earlier, only truly returning 15 years later.

When I first heard Nirvana, the sound wasn't a big shock to me, nor was their initial popularity. I spent the '80s ignoring 95% of pop/rock radio (couldn't stand the hair stuff, and most of the British synth-y stuff was too slick) and listening to and playing mostly punk and post-punk/alt-ish music. Before Nirvana, a band in that scene would occasionally pop up with a quirky modest hit, then drop back down into the underground. But when Nirvana became huge and Pearl Jam exploded as well, that was a gamechanger. Grunge was never my first love, but a lot of really good music that i still enjoy came out of that era, and certainly radio and music videos became more tolerable.

Michedelic said:
Boston and Bad Company were tired, old news bands by the end of the 80's. 20-year olds in that time period wanting to hear the Allmans? I don't think so. Neil actually embraced grunge, and it was great that he took noisemeisters Sonic Youth(a band influential on Nirvana, and helped them get signed to DGC/Geffen)tour with him to piss off the old hippies. He was the original flannel guy anyway(well, maybe Fogerty). How about that Arc album?
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Ha! I saw that Neil/SY tour, I was a big fan of both so that was a blast. Social Distortion opened the show as well. I distinctly recall a middle-aged guy with a tie dye shirt on, walking up the steps towards the concourse of the Orlando Arena during Sonic Youth's set with his hands over his ears and a very displeased expression on his face. What happened to "free your mind", maaaaaan!:D
 
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#148
I was in my second year of the first steady job I'd had since 1978 working as assistant editor of the fishermen's union newspaper here in Vancouver BC. That was nice, a steady pay cheque, a short walk to the office. Interesting work. What's not to like? Paid the house off in five years that way. Whew!

Had bought the house three years before so we had a permanent home of our own and my daughter was 15 and still in high school. My wife had just returned home after spending three months in Germany with her mother who'd had a serious operation and required home care. She had been freaked because the gulf War had just erupted before she had to leave in January.

I can't remember now but I was probably playing on and off with somebody or the other. Actually had a whole band set up and rehearsing in the basement music room at one point.

Nirvana was not on my radar at all. Didn't follow pop music.
 
#149
two fingers said:
Sure, some bands put out opportunities for trenage boys to vent. But they also CELEBRATED things. Just having a good time. Just being alive. Just getn wild! Fun! Grunge never celebrated a damn thing. It was depressing. It was angry. It was messy. Sure, I'm fine with "raw". But lighten up a little! And (in my region) it never translated well for cover bands. Neil Young and the Allmans had a bit of a comeback at that time. You could get away with playing their stuff. The occasional STP song went over well. But nobody wanted to have a beer over grunge music. Nobody wanted to crowd up to the stage or fill tue dance floor to grunge. They wanted to stand back with their untucked plaid flannel shirts (each if them expressing their individuality.... only exactly like everyone else) and their hands in their pockets looking too "cool" to let loose and have fun. DJs took over here because live music was painted into a box. You couldn't play Boston or Bad Company because that stuff was "selling out". You couldn't play grunge because nobody wanted to party to it. And, after all, partying is why people go to bars.

It was awful to watch unfold. Club owners banged their heads against the wall trying to keep live music going. Bit nobody had an appetite for LOCAL and/or cover bands.
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That's 180° the opposite affect it had in my part of the world.

Live music absolutely exploded.

Suddenly every bar was clamouring for live acts - bars that had never previously hosted live music.

Every couple of months, there was a Battle Of The Bands competition, with categories for just about every genre.

There were suddenly national music days, where outdoor venues would pop up, for local mini-festivals, with a wide mix of genres.

Practically every teenager, and early 20-something had their own originals band, which also brought out all of the older originals bands, and secured an appreciative audience for all of the blues bands, jam nights, and covers bands.

You couldn't go to a pub for a quiet pint, even on a Sunday afternoon, without a band playing in the corner, or in the beer garden.

It was really musically diverse, and vibrant.

After the Grunge bubble burst, there was a bit of a decline, but there was a lot of original Garage Rock, and Psychedelic Rock, Jungle / Drum & Bass stuff around.

Then Brit Pop happened and the live scene was rejuvenated again (though not to the same degree as during peak Grunge).

After that, live music dropped off a cliff, at the local level (it still existed, but with nothing like the presence it had in the early 90's), but it was still thriving in dedicated venues.
 
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#151
Being a drummer through the 60's till now.30 years ago,I was having a blast reliving my Teen years through my middle and high school teen aged kids,a boy and a girl, who both loved music, sang and played guitar.The Alternative rock thing was alot of fun for me to experience with them.I was about 48 years old then.67 now.Been on Bass for about 30 years off and on.Now permanently bass and loving it.
 
#152
RumblinThunder said:
drugs
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Oh - and I had just started on bass.
I traded a crappy cort guitar and a def leppard album for a takamine pointy-bass and landed a gig just by owning a bass. I also vaguely remember going to trade school.
Nirvana made an inpression that autumn , so did the shrooms.
Annoyingly the nevermind/whatever vibe stuck for a couple of years , leaving me with less than great grades.
Ah to be a dumb-ass teenager with a pointy bass again ;)
 
#155
I was in the middle of a two-year break from bass after severe RSI issues from my freshman year of college as a music major. Little did I know that I'd be getting back into bass with a vengeance once '92 rolled around - not to mention meeting my wife :)
 
#156
never had steady lessons, but took a couple in brkly from a guy named michael. when he told me nirvana was far superior to the beatles it was the end. i don't necessarily revere the beatles, but i'm not an imbecile.
 
#157
I had just had my first child, a daughter, and we were looking for a house to buy.
Things were so expensive (at the time, I laugh now) that we decided to buy a house in the high desert in CA.
Turned out to be a big mistake, but that's what you do when you're young and want a house.
I was only playing at weekly church service, no gigs for 15 or so more years.
 
#158
I was moving up in the consultant world developing GIS systems for cities and companies. I had a couple of preteens at home that eating my paychecks whole. I played along with the radio and jammed regularly with locals in garages. It was a moment where professionally I was going up and musically I wasn't doing much.
 
#159
I was playing in an original band in Edmonton AB and this album, and the Seattle scene, impacted us greatly. A buddy of mine even saw Nirvana play to an empty room in Edmonton a few weeks before Nevermind dropped. My band released it own independent tape in 92 and grunge was all over it. I quite playing by 93 and started playing again in 18.
 

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